Another Top-10 List — Cities with the Greatest (and Least) Percentage of Homes Worth More Than $1 Million

Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was magic in the word MILLION. Median home prices were less than $30,000. When I graduated with a Master’s degree in 1978 there were just 450,000 Millionaires in the country. There are almost 11 million today. Things change. So does the impact of some words.

Many people now own and live in a house worth more than $1 million. In some markets a residence worth more than $1 million is more common place than others.

Where are the greatest – and least – probability of living in a home worth more than $1 million? That question was answered in a just-completed study by LendingTree, at least among the 50 largest metros in the U.S. They looked at the share of homes valued for more than $1 million in the My LendingTree property value database which covers more than 155 million residential properties nationwide.

The following table lists the 10 metros with the greatest percentage of homes valued at more than $1 million. Other listed metrics include the median value of all homes in the metro and the median value of homes worth more than $1 million. In addition, the job growth rate for the 12-months ending May 2018 is detailed. Among the top-10 cities, all but one, Denver, are located along the coast. More than one-half of all homes in San Jose are worth more than $1 million.

The next table shows the 10 metros among the 50 most populated with the lowest percentage of homes worth $1 million or more. Only two of these metros (Indianapolis and Oklahoma City) had job growth rates greater than the 1.61 percent U.S. gain.

The data for all 50 of the largest U.S. metros are included in next table. In the city with the greatest percentage of $1 million plus homes, more than one-out-of-every two homes were worth more than $1 million (San Jose, California). The city with the least percentage of $1 million homes (Buffalo, New York) had just one-home-in-every 1,000 worth more than $1 million.

As usual, I invoke the TINSTAANREM axiom — There Is No Such Thing As A National Real Estate Market or a National Economy. The same is true regarding home values. Home values are purely a function of the interaction of local supply and demand. According to City-data.com there are more than 100 U.S. towns and cities with a median home price greater than $1 million. Click http://www.city-data.com/top3.html to see the top-100 list.

No doubt, given that demand is outstripping supply, even the term $1 Million home value will diminish in perception impact, just as the word Millionaire has in my lifetime.